Experiencing skiing and sledding in Hellenthal, Eifel

According to our experience, i'ts not easy to find ski area near Aachen. We had to look thoroughly in the net, watch closely the weather forcast or even needed to ask/phone some ski sites.

There are some places in the Eifel national parks that offer ski or cross country ski trails, as well as tracks for sledding. But, they mostly depend on the weather, which is now hardly to predict. One places that are quite adjascent to Aachen which does not depend on the weather, is the indoor ski arena in Landgraaf. However, it's quite expensive. One can spend about 20 euros for skiing in only 1 hour.

Lucky ! This month, we have a very nice snowing and that makes some places in eifel open for winter sport.

We visited Hellenthal, The Weisser Stein Eifel. It' still part of the low mountain range eifel which stretching from germany to Belgium.

We arrived there after about 1.5 hours journey from Aachen, exactly 15 minutes after it opens.The parking lots were still not too crowded. The weather was quite cold about -8°C. We walked following others and saw a lodge renting winter sports kit. We stopped by there and decided to rent ski shoes since the price was quite moderate. The old man there was nice, helping us to wear the shoes and ask if the shoes're comfortable enough. We payed directly as we wore it and left our identity card there along with our shoes.

Wearing ski shoes for the first time was not that comfortable since we dont used to it. With this kind of feeling, we still had to walk about 450 meters to the ski arena... pfuih. Once reaching the arena, we begun practicing... It's quite nice place for beginners though. there was some part of the trail that was not too steep. there was also ski lift with affordable price. Some of our friends preferred sledding. they also experienced a great fun on a track that was about 500 meters away down hill.